


Solidarity

by Kneamet



Category: Joaquin Phoenix - Fandom, Joker (2019)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-14
Updated: 2020-01-14
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:08:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22256224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kneamet/pseuds/Kneamet
Summary: That's how it's going to be, Arthur thought as he accepted an invitation to the Murray Franklin Show. "Not right away, but sooner or later it will be like this."
Relationships: Arthur Fleck/Original Female Character(s), Arthur Fleck/You, Joker/Original Female Character(s), Joker/You
Comments: 1
Kudos: 10





	Solidarity

You got the hang of it.

If any rind from a rotten banana can not slide down from the shoulders itself-shake it off. If smelly stains from vegetable juice soaked stage costume and do not wash off-you will find something to close.

In the end, having become adept at improvisation, you took yourself to a new level of your ruthless career. However, as you managed to discover the other day-your resentment remained, righteous anger only lurked for the jump, and did not dissipate with the long-awaited success.

And you were ashamed of Murray Franklin. And you were hurt for Arthur Fleck as for yourself.

As you adjusted your cuffs, you counted the seconds. The sense of the Right Moment has long permeated your reflex memory.

The drumming increased in intensity. The colored wings shivered in the draught. And so, with the final blow, you second by second, cheerfully and energetically parted the curtain, presenting to the audience Murray Franklin in all its glory.

You were greeted with applause. Someone even whistled when you walked with the easy, confident stride of a born dancer to the luxurious sofa that stood next to the comedian-showman.

In the same ostentatious way, you landed on this sofa and stretched out in it.

"Hello, Hello, dear audience!" you cried with a radiant smile, your arms outstretched as if for an embrace.

Your smile is painted on the edges. Your arms are only at a distance.

"How are you?" Hello! Hello! And Hello to you! "you were dispelling your masterly welcome. "How do you like Murray today?"

"I'm here, by the way, " said the smiling old host. The lines around his misty eyes stretched with his smile.

Everyone laughed.

"Oh, Hello," you said, holding out your hand to him in a small, casual way, as if you'd just noticed his existence.

They all laughed again.

"Oh, Yes, make yourself at home, miss Y/N, but don't steal my show, please," Franklin said with a firm, friendly handshake.

And more laughter. It is activated in the throat of a faceless crowd by inertia and is passed from one spectator to another like a yawn.

You contemptuously look at their shadows, crossing your legs, the spotlight doesn't bother you. Another moment of silence and here they are, assessing your posture from their judicial ranks, ready to hear " head off!"or something similar. Nevertheless, they will laugh again at this, you are sure.

"So, miss Y/N, I heard you were nominated for an award — Gotham's Golden smile!" Will you smile for us?

You obeyed, pursing your lips so that even your gums were visible. Your upturned head did not fall once. People applauded and laughed.

"Not too 'Golden' yet, I hope?" I'm brushing my teeth, I swear.

Laughter.

"What about me?" Franklin asked, running his tongue over his teeth and showing them to the audience in a slightly more respectable manner. "Will my teeth do for this award?"

The audience applauds.

Murray Franklin is also a nominee. You join him, and then you're together making faces at the laughing audience.

"Well, miss Y/N" the host offers you his hand again, " as your colleague, I wish you success." And let the funniest man win.

You lean over his hand and examine his fingers with a steady gaze.

"There's no hidden poison needle — that's good. Well, in that case, I'll have to wish you the same," you replied with a theatrical expression of surprise.

Laughter.

"A woman-and an award nominee! Let's applaud miss Y/N! Murray Franklin said, pulling away from your hand.

It was still hard for a humorist at the end of the twentieth century to be funny and not a laughing stock.

His words ran like a rough eraser over the corners of your smiling lips.

"The best of all Gotham's witty comedians-and stooped to such disgrace..." you muttered as the clapping in the audience died away.

"Excuse me?"..

You shrugged innocently and pursed your lips casually, but the question still lingered in your colleague's misty eyes, spreading confusion through the creases.

"Don't get me wrong, I respect you, of course!" "You don't seem convinced," she said. "After all, you're probably the only comedian in all of Gotham who didn't stoop to mediocre vulgarity, but that video..." Murray…

You said his name like a disapproving mother.

"Video?"

"With your colleague and Junior comrade, "you reminded him, maintaining a polite and friendly tone, looking the comedian in the sickly kind eyes without fear or embarrassment," with Arthur Fleck."

A sigh rippled through the room. Smart people could smell what was coming in the warming air, and between the two of you it was as if an electric circuit stretched.

You looked into each other's eyes and felt how heavy those mock-friendly glances were. But Murray wriggled out — he made a face of surprise, pursed his lips in perplexity, and played with drawn brows of incomprehension.

"Arthur-who?" I'm sorry, miss Y/N, I think I'm a little confused…

"Arthur Fleck" you interrupted. A little rough, for which you gave yourself a mental slap-in this game, you gave up a little, allowing anger and resentment to Shine lurking crowd for fun. "Well, Mr. Franklin, how often do you make your budding colleagues look ridiculous?" To be honest, I don't watch your show very often, but this is the first time in my memory that you've shown your unsolicited opinion of someone else's performance to all of television.

"Ah, Arthur Fleck! "remembering", the showman smiled and clapped his hands with "relief". "The young man who got a laugh in his mouth during his stand-up, right?" He seemed to address the question to his audience, crossing his arms over his stomach. "What's wrong?"..

It seems that Murray genuinely could not understand what exactly you do not like, and you were happy to explain the obvious to the unlucky. That's what I came for, you might say.

"Murray, Murray," you complained, sarcasm rising in your voice, " I'm not going to teach you to be a bully. You shook your forefinger in disapproval, watching the awkwardness begin to form in the depths of his eyes. "To mock an aspiring comedian would be to attack someone of your size."

Murray Franklin laughed with relief. It was only with his next words that you realized that everything with his "relief" is not so simple:

"Your size?" Ho-Ho, you don't mean yourself, do you, miss Y/N? Murray asked with a soft smile. "But you are right, "he suddenly became serious and turned his eyes back to the audience," it was unworthy of me. I solemnly swear to you all, as a token of my apologies, to give Mr. Fleck a "Golden Smile" when I get it" he certainly deserves it "I got a good look at his teeth."

Laughter.

Your shoulders were tensed, relaxed and tensed again in the course of his speech. All your remaining self-control went into these unconscious exercises, so you were no longer able to keep the mask on your face.

"Really?"..

Still, Franklin can afford such nonsense, too much loved by the public.

"Are you asserting yourself in such a pathetic way?" You?

"Self-sacrificing?.."

Now Franklin is confused and slightly hurt.

"What else was similar about your antics in front of the camera that day?"

Your voice is trembling with irritation, bursting like an overheated vessel, so that it can no longer withstand any pretense.

"So... this isn't a challenge, miss Y/N?" Are you serious…

"You would have known that long ago if you weren't such an ass."

An uncertain laugh, but mostly a multi-voiced sigh of surprise.

***

Paper, glue, and tobacco smoldered slowly on the tip of Arthur's cigarette, held between half-relaxed fingers. Smoke hovered before his indifferent eyes, covering Murray Franklin's face in the morning mist on the television. But it didn't really hurt.

It didn't hurt to listen. It didn't hurt to hate. It didn't stop him from cutting off the last brakes in his head, it didn't stop him from filling his lungs with smoke.

Better and better. Stronger and stronger. More and more desperate. More and more often.

Franklin's voice competed with the deep hum in his head, but when you appeared on the stage, everything was instantly silent.

He didn't care about the silence at first. He dropped the ash into the hands of the draught, ignored it when it scattered and rubbed it all over the bed, just lit a new cigarette, just lit it again. He swallowed the cigarette bitterness with a smoky gulp. It tastes like Gotham.

But then you spoke-in his defense — and he leaned forward reflexively. Driven by an impulsive desire, he tried to dispel the smoke as best he could with a languid movement of his hand — to see you better, in all colors.

He listened and smiled. He didn't seem to blink until Murray Franklin, in a strained voice, told him to switch to a commercial break.

He laughed. And since that day, you have slowly but surely replaced Sophie in his mind.

Sometimes he didn't even know it.

***

Not immediately, of course. Gradually. First he started looking at your performances — as if a new world had opened up for him. How is it that he didn't know about you before?

At first, he just imagined that she would answer his questions, his jokes, his confession…

... And then he stopped imagining and started seeing. To see before your eyes what is not there.

"Forget It, Arthur! you said, leaning back in your chair. You had a cigarette in your hand — people like them are essentially insignificant.

He was sitting next to me on the battered couch in your dressing room. Humble and meek, thrilled by your very presence, with a strained straight back so strained that it seemed as if the spine would crack.

He had a cigarette in one hand, and your ashtray in the other, where he was brushing away the burned-out remains. You threw ashes on the floor, not caring about anything. You are in your domain. It's in yours.

He just came to thank you for your support, and you made him welcome.

You smiled, the confidence you exuded enveloped him. And then you got up and sat down next to him and patted him gently on the shoulder.

"I'm on your side."

Cigarette smoke mixed.

Later, he started looking for cassette tapes of your performances, newspaper releases with news about you, with your photos. Then you were pasted everywhere on his diary-journal and on his unreliable memory.

It seemed to him that he clearly remembered when he was just imagining friendly conversations with you, but in the end his imagination still deceived him into believing that you now know each other.

He told himself that you were always confident, always brilliant, and that you only smoked when you were alone. I don't think he really cared where the truth was and where the fiction was-that fateful release of the once — beloved show was enough for him to catch his suffering mind on the lifeline of your bold statement and settle your image in himself to take off for a while from this filthy, vile acid swamp in which he had been

One small issue, half-interrupted, one kind word, one good day — such was the depth of his despair.

"I'm sure, Arthur, " you said, exhaling bitter smoke as you strolled together down the dank autumn Avenue, very close to each other, your shoulders almost touching. "I'm sure one day you will be noticed, recognized, exalted, and we will perform together. We will always be together."

When was this fantasy born? How far has your relationship progressed in his head? He no longer remembered clearly, but the imaginary you gave him confidence, and that was enough.

In a crimson and yellow suit and perfectly bright makeup, he waltzed with an imaginary partner behind the colored scenes, waiting for you to call him. The cigarette smoke that bloomed like a gray flower from his mouth, enveloping his figure, gave this dance a mystery.

"... And today we have a guest my dear friend and colleague in the shop, please love and favor-the Joker!" He listened to your voice and smiled. You could even say he was grinning. And then he came out into the spotlight.

Looking around at the audience, all of them in identical clown masks, he felt at home. But only for a few seconds did he bask in the melody of their applause.

Then he walked easily and confidently toward you, the only person other than him who stood out in this room.

"Miss Y/N"

"Mr. Jay."

You said Hello to each other when he fell on the sofa next to the host's Desk. They both had ingratiating smiles on their painted lips, impatient glints in their eyes, and Smoking cigarettes in their hands.

You took a drag and spoke:

"Joker, Jay, tell us all: now that you've succeeded, what else would you like for yourself?" "Your voice was encouraging and supportive. He leaned back and looked down at his admirers.

"You know, Y/N, this may seem a little strange, but now... all I want ... "he paused, though the answer was already in his head, on his tongue, and he didn't have to think about it," is for this whole beautiful and joyful world... to just burn down."

The audience applauded, and you smiled.

"Then shall we sing?"

After exchanging brief nods, you threw your cigarettes on the floor. You are in your own domain.

And then you got up from your seats, you picked up an intricate microphone from your stand, and slowly, with the music playing, you walked toward it.

"That's the time you must keep on trying  
Smile, what's the use of crying?  
You'll find that life is still worthwhile,  
If you just smile.»

You held one microphone in four hands. Fingers intertwined, voices intertwined, eyes intertwined. And at the end you simultaneously pressed the mysterious button located in the middle of the microphone handle and the floor under your feet began to shake, splitting in two.

Heart-rending sounds shattered like glass from all sides. The walls cracked, the stage equipment seemed to come to life, swaying, then falling, and most importantly the audience fell into the fiery Hell, one after another, but your audience still did not change in face — and looked at the stage with rapt eyes, disappearing into the roaring abyss of the explosion one after another.

The concrete jaws of the open floor, meanwhile, continued to devour everything but you.

***

That's how it's going to be, Arthur thought as he accepted an invitation to the Murray Franklin Show. "Not right away, but sooner or later it will be like this."


End file.
